Could not sleep and got out of bed with the house cold and loaded a bunch of small round of maple from Irene not a friend but the hurricane LOL full secondaries stove 500+ flue probe 500 all is good go figure.. I have come to the conclusion an epa rating of btu output is rather silly as this is making great heat with trash wood and it is more a matter of how the fire is treated and i am not a master at all but slowly learning about an epa stove. Busy making a big bed of coals rather than a long burn so plenty warm in the am.
Can not get a sustaining secondary burn
- Thread starter ddahlgren
- Start date
-
Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.
We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.
We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil. -
Super Cedar firestarters 30% discount Use code Hearth2024 Click here
- Status
13ft of flue should not be the problem. I ran a epa stove on about ten ft. for a number of years. So it would boil down to wood and outside temps. Once it starts to 40 deg. outside drafting starts to get tough. You do generally need a stove top temp around 400 to get the secondarys going, how long they last is a variable that is impossible to predict, maybe a 1/3 of a complete burn cycle.
5 hours since getting to 500 stove and stack and stove and stack still 200 maybe that maple is not trash wood. Really nice day outside spring might really be here but will bring in another stack of that maple just in case it gets cold tonight. It was supposed to be mid 40's last night and 35 when i lit the stove and going down.
It was stated a couple of times oak will not give the secondaries that a less dense wood will. Oak really needs a good bed of coals to work well.
As far as the height of the chimney goes, not all EPA stoves are the same and some may work better than others with a short chimney.
As far as the height of the chimney goes, not all EPA stoves are the same and some may work better than others with a short chimney.
I need to get much better versed on telling one wood type from another other than wet or seasoned and hardwood or softwood as thay is my current limit right now. If there is bark I can browse the net and look at differnt types but is no bark and all hardwood how in the world do you tell what is is. All my previous garde school / boy scount tree identification was from seeing the whole tree and leaf types once cut and split that is all gone. Sofor me anissue toknow one from the other. I wam willing to bet the wood I had in the beginning was not the oak I have now but some other species. If any clue it was dark brown and rather stringy texture to the wood. it was definitely a hardwood as very dense and heavy but also seasoned 2 to 3 years from CS. Whatever it was you could toss a 10 inch split on an inch of coal and be burning very well in 10 to 15 seconds. The other thing different is my kindling was cut up pallets rather than scrap pine from doing trim work. I am actually thinking about selling my older Corvette to buy a pick-up to get the abundance of free wood here. I do have a 4 dr sedan with a v-6 but doubt I would sell that as it only has 78k on it runs perfect even though 10 years old and did get 33 mpg before the ethanol crap now closer to 28-29 on the highway. My commute to work for the last 20 years has been about 75 ft..LOL.. The other thing i need to get done is get my Stihl 023 free saw running. I know it is a toy as far as saws go but I think will be light and easy to handle for the odd piece that needs to be cut or some wood cut up after a storm.
ddahlgren, it takes some time to learn the ropes so hang in there, Oak and Locust and White Ash for me all have less secondaries they Elm, Green Ash, Cherry, and Silver Maple. I guess it is do to the dense wood. I dont like burning Oak during the shoulder season, too much of a pain in the ass, great wood when its cold and you have a nice bed of coals.
I am loving the 2 year old small maple rounds to be honest they measure very dry but do seem to coal a lot at least the way i burn them. appreciate I am a previous pallet burner..LOL so hard to make a mistake but have a bunch of years doing that in a smoke dragon that actually ran clean with the very dry wood. The cord of maple and hickory I got looks more seasoned in under 3 months than 1 year old oak by look and feel the split to the cheek test to see if cool or outside temp. They are browning up and checking at a very quick piece and have not been stacked yet but in a very loose pile with loads of air and sun.
It would seem like it is a weaker draft due to warmer temps. The fact that it is taking longer to heat up and stay warm longer could mean there is less air moving through it. Less air to get the fire hot; less air to cool it down when the burn has subsided.
- Status
Similar threads
